Coming Soon: EVERY Instructable, one massive book

[edit: this isn't real, but it would be awesome]

In the interest of helping out our amazing community of authors, we’ve decided to make all of Instructables available for download in a single PDF document. That way when the EMPs hit or the grid goes down, you’ll have all the chicken rearing, solar paneling, rain barreling, wind turbining, and urban farming resources you’ll need. And because we’re including everything, you’ll also be able to stave off the post-apocalypse blues with bacon roses and unicorn poop.

We’re putting all 127,000 Instructables projects into a single omnibus edition that will be sold at cost (TBD) to Instructables authors and for about $1000 for non-members. We’ll also make the PDF available to Pro members. If you’re so inclined, you can print and bind your own version. Get familiar with KaptinScarlet’s “How to Bind Your Own Hardcover Book” Instructable.

We found a spectacular publisher who’s willing to bind the pages with paracord and baling wire. This edition should have just about 30 meters of paracord in the binding, along with just enough baling wire to keep the whole thing together if you choose to take out the paracord. The publisher also agreed to include a metal shank in the spine that can be fashioned into a makeshift knife, shovel, or bottle opener. The book is big enough to make a pretty nice counterweight for a small trebuchet, too.

There were a few challenges for this publication. First of all, there’s an awful lot of content. To keep the print length down, we used small images wherever possible. We also cut the comment sections and individual project tables of contents. We did, however, keep the advertisements in the margins just in case AdSense will pay out during the End of Days.

This publisher did balk at including packages of strike-anywhere matches in the book jacket. Sorry everybody. Matches were deemed “too unsafe” for their production and distribution teams. As though a conflagration of Amazon packages in the back of a UPS truck is less safe than losing a few digits to a frozen post-apocalyptic hellscape.

The biggest challenge of all, though, was the sheer size of the book itself. The rough draft weighed in at about 500 kilograms. In a lucky break, using that ultra-thin biblical/lexicographer paper stock allowed us to cut the weight to just 220kg AND to make the pages double as bathroom tissue in a Charmin-less world. The tome will require a licensed forklift operator to receive it (or you can choose to pay the $150 white glove installation surcharge.) And, as usual, we cannot ship to a PO box.

on a serious note....i ham building quite the digital library...i am going to be making a massive collection of volumes of "Ibles Books" to put into my personal library. volumes will be based off the categories of instructables and the types of instructables..ie Outdoors, Survival, Paracord, How to make a Paracord survival belt...

Pro-tip: build them as collections to keep everything organized. You can even put collections into collections, so your books can be available as "books" to the entire Instructables community. PM me if you want to chat more. I was the ebooks intern here once upon a time.